By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

Book Information

> The only book to treat the specific problem of the interaction ofsemantic, syntactic and even lexical principles in the construal of tenseand modality> Brings together the contributions of the leading authors in the field

Time and Modality is a unique work of reference; not only does it unitestudies which explore the syntax and semantics of tense or modality but itis the first book of its kind to embrace the interaction of tense andmodality within a coherent generative model. Various topics are covered inthis volume: among them are the counterfactual uses of conditionals,modals, and past tense; the irrealis use of perfective aspect; a specialEnglish subjunctive; the interaction of tense assignment and the definitionof an event; the modal verb as a causative verb; the interaction ofmodality, tense, and aktionsart; the contrast between deontic and epistemicmodal with respect to tense interpretation; the syntax of epistemic modals;the long-awaited definition of generic and habitual sentence; and theintroduction of intensionality in copular clauses.

Although every article deals with English to some degree, two chapterscompare the syntax and semantics of tense and modality in Spanish vsEnglish. The authors also investigate Slavic, Germanic, Afro-Asiatic,Oriental, Amerindian Languages and Hungarian.